news.google.com links crash (WinMe)

colfer · Post by **colfer** » March 16th, 2003, 11:12 am

<edit>simplified problem, nothing to do with tabs</edit>

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; rv:1.4a) Gecko/20030314 Phoenix/0.5

I'm trying to setup Px on a friend's WindowsME, and am seeing issues I haven't seen on other Windows platforms. I don't know how good this WinMe installation is. Please tell me if you have any hints about these two problems:

1. http://news.google.com links -> crash.
If I click on any of the links like "and n related links >>", such as <a href="http://news.google.com/news?num=30&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=cluster:www%2ehinduonnet%2ecom%2fthehindu%2fstories%2f2003031601851400%2ehtm">this one</a>, then Windows reports "Phoenix caused an error in [unknown]." The browser is frozen, and it's a chore to get the sytem to reboot without having to push the reset button.

I've tested 2003-03-14, 2003-03-04 and the 0.5 milestone, and they're all bad, but the links work fine on a Win98 system.

2. Install crash for 2003-03-04, with no profile.
I tried the workaround of adding a comment to prefs.js after the first crash, and it didn't help.

So is this just a bad WinMe system? Any common fixes?

Post by **old Neil Parks** » March 16th, 2003, 12:23 pm

colfer wrote:I'm trying to setup Px on a friend's WindowsME, and am seeing issues I haven't seen on other Windows platforms. I don't know how good this WinMe installation is. Please tell me if you have any hints about these two problems:

1. http://news.google.com links -> crash.
If I click on any of the links like "and n related links >>", such as <a href="http://news.google.com/news?num=30&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=cluster:www%2ehinduonnet%2ecom%2fthehindu%2fstories%2f2003031601851400%2ehtm">this one</a>, then Windows reports "Phoenix caused an error in [unknown]." The browser is frozen, and it's a chore to get the sytem to reboot without having to push the reset button.

WFM using Win ME.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; rv:1.4a) Gecko/20030316 Phoenix/0.5

Goldzilla · Post by **Goldzilla** » March 16th, 2003, 5:31 pm

I'd try a complete reinstall of Phoenix. I used older versions of Phoenix with no problems on Windows ME. Finally upgraded one of my laptops to XP last week. Feels like a brand new machine. I'd recommend upgrading as I absolutely hated Windows ME. Would usually crash at least once a day on me.

colfer · Post by **colfer** » March 16th, 2003, 7:36 pm

Thanks for the input. Yep, those versions of Px I tried were all clean installs, and I wiped out the profile in "Application Data" too. I'm guessing the OS has a problem, but I'll try another look through bugzilla. The link does have an usual character:

news.google.com/
news?num=30&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
&q=cluster:www%2ehinduonnet%2ecom
%2fthehindu%2fstories%2f2003031601851400%2ehtm

I'll try escaping that colon when I get back to the machine.

Goldzilla · Post by **Goldzilla** » March 16th, 2003, 8:01 pm

Any chance of a character set [language] issue?

colfer · Post by **colfer** » March 17th, 2003, 5:49 am

OK, I found the problem. This part of the html causes the crash:
<img src=images/cleardot.gif width=1 height=2500>
That gif is 1x1, so it looks like a divide by zero error.

Now, is it WinMe or Phoenix or Google that needs fixin'?

colfer · Post by **colfer** » March 17th, 2003, 10:39 am

I'm suspecting this bug:
"Image stretched about 2048x crashes Win9x with nvidia cards"
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=128961
The bug is marked invalid because it's an Nvidia driver problem, but that's a bit controversial. Mozilla could try some more error trapping? (Yes, the page loads fine in IE.)

The chip is Athlon, which is how I found the bug, but that actually seems <i>not</i> to be the problem, since one bug reporter was using a Pentium.

I came across another divide-by-zero problem on Google, this one blamed on a VIA chipset, again <i>not</i> the Athlon chip: <a href="http://lists.adeptscience.co.uk/mathcad/mathcad_Jan_2003/thid_e93a1312ff07cebd5780d6200a336e39.html">post on the MathCAD mailing list</a>. It suggests telling the chip's FPU to quiet down with the exceptions.

colfer · Post by **colfer** » March 17th, 2003, 10:46 am

Does anyone else think this bug should not be "invalid"? Seems IE fixed it.

I'll quote from the bug discussion since it's so long.

------- Additional Comment #209 From Eric Towers 2002-10-03 21:38 -------
...
Further, is it correct to categorize the problem as entirely an nVidia driver
problem? The defunct Mozilla process was not successfully terminated, removed
from memory, or removed from the process tables. Further, the lingering browser
zombie successfully prevents user logouts and (in 50% of my replications)
successful shutdown of the machine. (Hangs at "Windows is shutting down" placard.)
My point is that the browser didn't fail in a graceful manner. It blew up,
splattered chunks everywhere, and interfered with simple user procedures to
rectify the problem.

(and now I head out to nVidia's site to get new drivers and shake my fist at
their old drivers...)

------- Additional Comment #210 From Lorenzo Colitti 2002-10-04 03:43 -------

fuzzyeric: it's a *driver bug*, not a mozilla bug. mozilla calls a legitimate
function, with legitimate parameters. The driver fails to handle it and causes a
divide error, at which point the OS terminates mozilla but doesn't do it
properly because the error occurs in the driver and not in the mozilla. So it's
the driver and the OS's fault, not mozilla's.

...

Oh, let me mention one more thing. I don't think it's good html coding to make such an extreme stretch. It's caused problems with browsers before. I also hear tiling a tiny image as a "background=" can slow down slower computers. I'm sure no one here uses spacer gifs, but if you do, 1x1 is probably not the best size, and for 1x2500, make a gif that size! <edit>I've emailed Google about this.</edit>

news.google.com links crash (WinMe)

news.google.com links crash (WinMe)

Re: news.google.com links crash (WinMe)